Take a minute to consider what your relationship to exercise is founded
on.

Why are you in this relationship to begin with? Your weight? Long-term
health benefits? Beacause you have to
exercise (everyone else is doing it)? Does the doctor (or your mother) say you
should? Scrap that.

As with all relationships, the clue to real love (getting to the point where you “miss” it when you are
not together), is enjoying spending
time together. You need to learn to enjoy movement for movement’s sake, for the
pure joy of feeling your body moving.

Stop
thinking about what it could do for you long term:What does it do for you now?

Do you feel happy after moving your body? Limber & looser?
Freer? More powerful? Does it clear your mind and your worries for a while? Is
the world a better place after spending some time with your moving body?

If all you focus on is the long-term benefits, and you can’t see
what it is already doing for you today, you will take all the joy out of your
relationship. Start living your
relationship in the present. Go back to why you like to move, not what it
can give you long term.

Stop
thinking so much about what It should be giving You: What can You give It?

As with all relationships the best you can give your partner is your full attention. Learn to read your
moving-body’s nuances of tone, its changes in inflexion. Delight in the sheer
pleasure of your body pounding, shaking, jumping the stress and tension out of
your mind, body and soul. You can both then bask in the post-workout glow.

5 ways to apply this advice right away

1.
List the reasons why you DO love to move. Refer to it often.

It’s good to remind yourself what it’s REALLY all about, for
those times when going gets rough.

2.
List the forms of movement that you DO love to engage in.

When going gets rough, there has to be a foundation of love to
fall back on. Do not expect to love your workout routine tomorrow if you never
loved it to begin with (or worse, if you hate it). Find yourself an activity
you really enjoy doing and stick to that for now.

You can try
being aware of your feet, or your
armpits, or your neck, during movement. The point is
to start really connecting to your moving body, to learn to be present in the
moment and in the movement. All true joy springs from this fountain.

4.Start researching possible places where you can go on workout
dates.

Decide if you want to
have some alone time on your date (perhaps a leisurely walk or run along the
beach or a country trail… you can take the dog too), or you’d rather party with
friends (a dance class, a pilates class, a yoga class, a functional fitness
class, a tennis match… so many options, you can pick your party-style).

5. If your relationship is in
real tatters, get some professional help.

A good teacher or coach can make all the difference if you
find yourself hating your time together with your body during your workouts.
What you need is to learn each other’s language. Only then will you each be able to communicate more
clearly your needs and delights. An Alexander Technique teacher can help you
get back in touch with what your body is feeling, with how to communicate clear
directions to it, and how to grow together towards your true potential.

Friday, 23 May 2014

I used to hateworking out. Really, REALLY hate it. It made me sore, it
tensed me up, it made me feel inadequate when I couldn’t perform half the
movements in class, while the person next to me seemed to breeze through the
workout without even breaking a sweat. I quit going to gyms completely and
turned my back on anything that looked remotely like a PE class.

That has all
completely changed for me. Now I find myself
going to the gym 4 times a week where I run, jump, squat, ab-crunch, pull-up,
push-up and generally do, with great gusto, all the sorts of movements I used
to abhor.

One of the keys to
enjoying a workout is enjoying performing the movements that are an integral
part of it.

Granted, no one “enjoys” doing three sets of 10 burpees (squat-plank-squat-jump)
at the end of an hour long workout. But having good body mechanics can make the
whole difference between hating your trainer’s guts or taking it all in good stride
as part of what’s got to be done to complete that day’s workout.

Good body-mechanics
is something most people have lost somewhere down their lives’ paths. At some point bizarre ideas about how your body works and where
your body parts join each other have crept up on you, with the devastating
result that you move expending way more energy than necessary, and using
muscles ill-suited for the job at hand. No wonder you end up all tense and
exhausted. The worst part is that strain
injuries are only a step away from faulty body-use.

Lousy body-mechanics
will become more evident once muscle fatigue settles in. You’re on the third round of the workout circuit and suddenly
your realize that your right shoulder and arm aren’t responding as efficiently
as your lefts, making you rely heavily and overuse the left side. Or perhaps
you’re at ab-crunch number 30 of the 4th round and you realize your previously
symmetrical torso rise has become a lopsided affair: you twist up instead of
rising up parallel.

This seeming trivial asymmetry wouldn’t have risen to the
surface if you hadn’t taken yourself to the limit. Perhaps you weren’t even
aware that you favored one side over the other, you were happily and
unconsciously compensating. You might be
tempted to think that all you need to do is “strengthen” the muscles on the
weak side. However “logical” this reasoning might appear, it is way off-target.
The asymmetry, or twist, that becomes evident when you take yourself to the
limit, is not something that wasn’t there before, it was there all along, it is how you habitually activate the
muscle pattern for that particular movement.

So, if strengthening
the weak side isn’t the solution; what is there to do?

You figure out if
you’ve got a stage 1, 2 or 3 problem.

Movement patterns
are learned and integrated in 3 stages, following the standard neurological
pathway of habit formation. So correcting body-mechanics is really all
about re-training habits.

STAGE ONE =
PERCEPTION TRAINING

The first stage is awareness.

You need to recognise 4 basic things:

1) The mechanics of what you want to do (e.g. what does a correct
squat entail);

2) What you are in fact doing (e.g. what am I doing when I squat);

3) In what ways what you want to do and what you are in fact doing
differ from each other;

4) What you need to (re)learn to get nearer to your goal.

Sometimes it’s hard to see this on your own (we can’t see what
we don’t know). So a good idea is to find outside help. Personally, what I do
is go to an Alexander Technique teacher or any other movement specialist who
has a really good eye for movement patterns and can tell me what I’m physically doing that is
manifesting as wrong muscle activation sequences. Such a teacher can also help
me figure out what wrong ideas I’m
harboring about my own body and its mechanics, and can help me see what mood is concomitant with this state of
affairs.

Stage one is all
about recognition, learning to perceive what you were blind to before. It’s basic body mapping, recognition of habitual muscle
activations patterns, becoming aware of discrepancies between my perception of
reality and what is really happening.

During this stage
you lay down new neural pathways.

STAGE TWO = MIND
TRAINING

The second stage is directed conscious application.

Every time you’re faced with a cue for action (e.g. “squat!”) You
need to practice NOT automatically doing how you did it before (this is harder
than it sounds, believe me), and instead doing it the new way.

Stage two is about
being able to consciously deactivate the sequence that’s causing the faulty
execution, and consciously choosing the new activation sequence, EVERY TIME the
action is called for. This stage requires ATTENTION & THOUGHT, you
need to be FOCUSED & PRECISE.

During this phase
you’re strengthening the new neural wiring you laid down in stage one.

STAGE THREE = REAL-LIFE TRAINING

The third stage is using your new knowledge in physical reality.

Stage three is when you take your newly integrated pattern and
test drive it in real life, in situations when you can’t over-think it, when
speed and power are called for. During this type of training you get to see how
much of the new sequence has become truly automatic and second nature.

After a while at this stage you will run into apparently new
(but in truth really old) faulty mechanics. Patterns that used to be hidden
under the old compensations will rise to the surface. But this time you’re
prepared: you won’t try to deal with them with more reps of the same; now you
know you have to get back to the drawing board.

Working out has
become not only a pleasure, it is now also a science. You’re
now not only stronger, faster, leaner, fitter, healthier; you’re also SMARTER.

So, if you’re stuck in your progress, if working out isn’t fun
anymore, if it is just too painful, or if you don’t seem to get any better… then
you might need to take yourself to stage one, and build yourself up again
towards finally embodying your true potential.

Friday, 16 May 2014

It took 3 things and none of them had anything to do with being
a born and bred athlete (I’m actually more of the nerdy intellectual type).

The 3 things (in sequential-but-overlapping order) are:

1. A fine-tuning of my body-map.

2. A re-learning of muscle activation sequences.

3. A re-framing of my mindset.

Allow me to briefly explain each point.

1. A fine-tuning of my body-map.

Before getting this bit on board, gym instructors, sports
coaches, PE trainers, they all would give me endless pointers to correct my
execution of the movements, and I would do my best to follow them… but my best
wasn’t enough. I was sure I was following instructions (I definitely had them
all in mind) but it seemed my body wasn’t getting the memo. So I would try
harder, tense up more, put in more effort… and end up hurting all over and
still delivering a mediocre output. No wonder I got discouraged.

However, once I learned how to “speak psychophysical” I finally could get my mind and body
coordinated so that both did what I wanted them to. This has meant more
effectiveness in my movement, and more efficiency in my energy usage.

[Psssst…. If you want to start building your body-map, check out
these posts: axila, neck, feet].

2. A re-learning of muscle activation sequences.

Put simply, I needed to learn how to keep the stability of my
torso while my limbs are moving, in such a way that my movement reflected more a
running cheetah, with super
range of motion, and a flexible but stable and strong torso, rather than a zombie walk. It’s all about
efficiency, using the right muscles in the right sequences, and for the right
purposes. It’s impossible to achieve without a minimum grasp of the body-map.
And you need to practice and master it first in low-intensity movements with
great precision, before attempting to go all out in speed and effort.

3. A re-framing of my mindset.

During a high-intensity workout you will get tired. Your mind
will start playing tricks on you, telling your body “you’ll die if you don’t
stop now”. There’s actually more mettle to you than you believe. Knowing your
body-mind language you can actually re-orient the conversation. The body can
actually go greater distances if the mind will stop blabbering out useless
gossip, and instead use its energy to tell the body how to keep proper form,
how to be more efficient, how to do less of the unnecessary to do more of the
real task at hand.

I love mind games, changes of perception, calling on innercharacters. So during high intensity workouts I put on a different hats,
play the “as if…” games I used in theatre training. There are three of you at
it: your body, your mind and your conscious attention & direction. Make
sure your consciousness is keeping mind and body in order by calling on the right emotional mood for the moment. Play at make-believe like when you were a child, become a
horse, a cheetah, a warrior, anything that bring on the right mood, the right psychophysical attitude. It’s
fun. It’s effective.

And you… What has made you love your workouts? How do you keep
your form under stress?

Tell me. I'm curious.

Victoria

P.S. If you’d like to try this out for yourself, contact me. I can help you with
all three steps, and recommend great places and people who can help you get
your low-key initial workouts for muscle-tone prep and practice, and then test
your mettle at the high-key ones.

P.P.S. If you’ve got joint pain (back, arms, legs) you can still build
your way to this. You just need to learn how to get yourself out of the pain,
into the shape, and onto the right mindset.

However, I forgot to mention a very important fact: when we set out to learn something new and
totally foreign to us, we need to have an open attitude, an attitude of
listening with our full being (body and mind), without fighting beforehand with
the stuff we hear. Perhaps we’ll understand little at first; perhaps some
of the things we learn will be so different from the way we’ve conceived them up
until then that at first we might instinctively and reflexively reject them. But
it’s worthwhile taking the time to listen, to accept that we don’t see the full
picture and that some things will become clearer with time, and to acknowledge
the fact that I can open up to the new experience little by little, by degrees,
and only up to the point that I feel I can manage and integrate the new
stimulus.

Let me give you an example from my past week that illustrates
this point rather well.

Last Tuesday I went to a CrossFit
lesson. I confess I was petrified. It’s been years since I practiced any sort
of physical exercise that did not include the word “consciousness” in its
description. But the point is I’ve been told I need to build up some muscle
mass to achieve more stability, stamina and character strength. If we accept
the concept of the psychophysical unity, the latter makes a lot of sense: I
have a rather “ethereal” constitution, with a pronounced tendency to “take
flight” towards higher planes of abstraction. Therefore, getting a more solid
rooting to the Earth through body mass is something that I can understand as necessary,
in my particular case. I already do Pilates training 4 times a week and have a
fairly good and even muscle tone; but the philosophy and attitude behind the
Pilates a practice is all about precision, care, fluidity and consciousness…
and what I was recommended was little bit more of blood, toil, tears and sweat.

So there I was at the Box, at 9am, trembling and semi-convinced
that I wasn’t going to last more than 20 minutes into the whole routine. But I
was open to listening what they had to teach me; I was of course going to put
my own safety and health first and foremost, but I was anyway open to
experimenting the system without judging it negatively beforehand. The training
has a definite “military” flavor to it, and it is taught and coached from that
mindset. So to really dive into the
experience, and sustain the demands it made on body and mind, I had to get into
the spirit of the thing, into the right mindset, and go to that place
within me that has something of the warrior to it and who could connect to what
was (literally) written on the wall: “You don’t stop when you’re tired, you
stop when you’re done.”

What does all this
have to do with learning propioception and ‘psychophysical language’ that we
were talking about last week?

A lot. Let me ennumerate the most important things.

To really learn a
new language it is necessary to:

1) Become involved with and internalize the culture of which it is
a fundamental part: Only thus will we ever grasp the subtleties of the
language, and thus be able to go into the particular state of body and mind
that it produces. The language that your body and mind speak to each other is
part of a culture too: it is based on homeostasis, on the dynamic equilibrium
between opposing forces, between stimuli and responses. To really ‘get’ this
language and be able to speak it fluently, we need to understand it from within
its own culture.

2) Know how to listen, see, feel the “natives”; that is, know how to
perceive them in their totality: Only then will we be
able understand the psychophysical attitude (the attitudes of body and mind) that
is required to live the experience “like a native”. The language your body and
mind speak has its rhythms, vocabulary, timings, cadences and intonations: it
is based on this game of balance and counterbalance. In order to hear this
language we need to open ourselves up to perceive this game of constant
adjustments.

3) Open ourselves up
to the experience, without believing that simply because we know other
languages, or because we’re experts in grammar and linguistics, we
automatically know everything about every other language: Every language has its wisdom which can only be acquired if we
allow ourselves to fully live the experience it offers, without pre-judgments
about how things “should” be. Needless to say that knowing about grammar and
linguistics helps us learn a language faster, by understanding its underlying
structure, but it does not make us fluent at it.

Returning to my CrossFit example, thanks to my study of the
Alexander Technique, my training in Pilates, and my fascination with anatomy
and physiology, mental processes and body-mind interactions (neuroscience and
philosophy) I do have a good working knowledge of the linguistics of
psychophysical language. However, this does not make me an expert in other body
disciplines; I do have a working
advantage when it comes to learning them, but I still need to be willing and
open to learn.

This is the attitude with which you should approach the
exploration of the language your body and mind speak: willing to allow yourself
to be surprised by what you discover, trying not to assume you know what you
haven’t experienced yet in all its facets, and giving yourself time to discover
things, try them out and embody them.

Friday, 2 May 2014

Did you know that
your back pain, your chronic muscle tension and your bad posture could be products
of your ignorance of a key language that is being spoken non-stop all around
you, but that you somehow cannot perceive because you don’t know about it?

What would you give
to learn to speak this language?

I’ve been giving English language lessons for many years here in
Uruguay. Generally my students are adolescents who are trying to keep up with
their school’s English requirement, or who are trying to pass one of the
several English language international examinations. These kids come to one
hour lessons weekly, sometimes two or three times a week. Some of them don’t
even like English all that much. And yet, they understand and accept that, in today’s
world, it is necessary for them to
know and speak English. Their parents have made that point abundantly clear to
them.

What strikes me as interesting is that we all live immersed in
another language of which the vast majority no nothing about: it’s the language
in which body and mind speak to each other. It is not a verbal language; it is
a language of neural stimuli and physiological responses, and we perceive it
through our physical sensations and emotional states. However, since we have
never been taught this subtle language’s grammar, structure or vocabulary, our
interpretation of it, and our ability to intervene in this ongoing
communication in order to achieve certain desired results, ends up being
limited, when not downright counterproductive.

Not knowing how to speak this tongue is much more limiting for
our wellbeing than not knowing any other language. And yet, few people know
about it, and even fewer take the time and effort to study it. The results of
this illiteracy are serious health problems, both physical (hernias, chronic
muscle tension, joint wear and tear leading to arthritis, etc.), and emotional
(uncontrolled stress responses, anxiety, stage fright, etc.), as well as
general unhappiness borne from not being able to achieve our desired physical
and mental outputs.

You need to learn how to listen to and understand what your body
and mind are telling each other, because it is this ongoing conversation that
is dictaing your phsyical form (posture). Your posture (the end result of this
conversation in this language you may know nothing about) has direct effects on
your physical and emotional health, as well as on how others perceive you,
which in turn directly affects your relationships and social life. Being able
to consciously have a say in this conversation, in order to re-direct its flow
towards the results you desire, should be a priority in our education, in much
the same way that we are expected to speak a second language and know how to
use a computer for most jobs.

If we accept the premise that to correct your posture and
improve your physical and mental performance you need to learn a new language
(let us call it the Psychophysical Language), it is to be expected that you
won’t be able to master it from reading a book or taking a few lessons.
However, you do not need countless years of lessons to get to a fairly proficient
level; after all, you used to speak this language fluently as a very young
child, so it’s just a question of uncovering what you already know but forgot.
As with all language, it is possible to quickly learn to recognize some key
words and phrases, and to learn to communicate with them to achieve basic
goals. With time, patience and commitment you could become quite fluent at it,
to the point of “blending in with the natives” so to speak.

This is why I would like to teach you some of these key words
and phrases, so that you can start having a dialogue with your body-mind. Your
mind is already conversing with your body, but it does so at an unconscious
level. We’ll try to bring some of this conversation up to a conscious level, so
that you can start hearing what your mind is telling your muscles, and can
decide if perhaps it wouldn’t be to everyone’s benefit if you altered the tone
of their conversation.

Let us start with the feet. What are your feet telling you?

Your feet are the base of support for your whole body when you
are standing and of your legs when you are sitting on a chair. They are made up
of a lot of little bones (26), muscles (38), joints (40) and tendons (over
100). Given all these available structures to articulate, your feet are able to
“speak the psychophysical language” with a great nuances of tone and an ample
vocabulary. If we give our feet the necessary space to move freely, they are
able to adapt their shape to all types of terrain and thus help you keep your
balance. However, we tend to have them cramped, compressed and bound up inside
shoes that do not allow them to communicate all the information they have about
where and what you’re standing on. Mostly, we only listen to our feet when they
scream in pain after long hours of being tortured.

In my previous blog I told you about theimportance of creating a spcae and time for practice.
Conscientiously practicing a little bit of self-observation every day es the
equivalent of studying the grammar of this psychophysical language we’re
talking about today. The more you get to know this sensorial language in which
your body and your mind speak, the more you’ll be aware of it, and how it
affects your performance, in your daily life. And as soon as you start to
listen in on these conversations and understand their general gist, you’ll be
able to join in on the dialogue and thus avoid only finding about the important
things when they’re already a health problem.

So this week I invite you to start by reconnecting with your
feet. I’m leaving you 3 simple practices to jumpstart your exploration. It’s
best if you do them with bare feet, so take advantage of your morning or
evening shower to practice them.

1.We tend to have the soles of our feet really tense
and this generates tension throughout the whole posterior musculature of your
leg, all the way up to your sitting bones. To release your feet think about the
space between your toes and imagine that warm water runs between each pair of
toes. Be aware that your toes are way longer than you probably imagine.
Although they’re covered in skin, which makes them look like one big mass, your
toes actually start halfway down your foot. They need the space between them in
order to move freely and adapt and mold to different surfaces and thus help you balance.

2.When you are standing the weight of your body should
be spread equally among 3 key points on your foot: the heel, the base of the
big toe, and the base of the little toe. You are in essence standing on a
tripod, or a three-legged stool. Check to see which of these three points you
tend to favour the most, and which foot you tend to favour the most. Play with
your body weight, alternating the emphasis on each point and noting the effect
that it has on your posture and the amount of muscle tension you must put on
your legs and lower back to keep your balance.

3.We can now join exercises 1 and 2. Release the soles
of your feet, remembering the space between your toes, and feel the weight of
your body distribute itself on the 3 points of contact: center of the heel, base
of the big toe, and base of the little toe. Imagine that at each of these three
points of contact you have little suction pads that adhere your feet to the
ground, connecting you with the earth. Move your toes around, opening them and
closing them, while keeping the sole of the foot soft and the 3 key points in
easy contact with the floor.

Practice these exercises for a week and let me know what you
find out about the conversations your feet are having.

See you next week with more Psychophysical Language grammar and
vocabulary lessons ;)

Victoria

P.S. Alexander Technique teacher Angela Bradshaw has just published an excellent book on how
to recover your body-mind balance and release unnecessary tensions, called “Be
In Balance: A Simple Introduction to the Alexander Technique”. It comes with a
lot of easily applicable exercises and ideas. The book is easy to read and full
of great drawings, and makes for a great introduction to the concepts of the
Alexander Technique for those wanting to explore it. You can get the book on
Amazon.com on this link (US)
or this link (UK).